


this one time at not-band camp

by uumiho



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Blowjobs, Bullying, M/M, Musicians, Social Isolation, Summer Camp
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-26
Updated: 2016-10-26
Packaged: 2018-08-27 03:14:48
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8385079
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/uumiho/pseuds/uumiho
Summary: Jake English loathes Summer Camp. He hates absolutely everything about it, except for this one peculiar, sharp boy who won't stop staring at him before quickly looking away.And then there's the music.





	

**Author's Note:**

> fun fact: my autistic partner read this and was like "is jake autistic" so if that headcanon is kind of your jam feel free to read this as autistic jake tbh
> 
> this was supposed to be 3k and take two hours and instead it took three days and reached almost eight thousand words i have nothing to say for myself except
> 
> it's still the 25th of October somewhere. happy [Jake English Appreciation Week](http://jake-english-week.tumblr.com).
> 
> (other notes: jake and dirk are 17 in this. i don't consider two same-aged people above the age of consent in most places to be quite deserving of an 'underage' tag, but if that bothers you then you might want to hit the back button.)

Summer Camp isn’t quite the same as frolicking on an island with your grandma, but the tipside is that there are a lot more people to interact with than just your grandma, which after spending most of your childhood prowling earth’s secluded forests at her side is an intriguing challenge all its own. You’re up for the challenge, you’re sure!

* * *

You are, perhaps, less optimistic after actually arriving _at_ Summer Camp and meeting the other kids. Jane’s dad assures you it’ll be fine, kisses his daughter on the head, and pats your back, and then is gone.

(It helps that Jane is just as apprehensive around other people as yourself. It doesn’t help that she seems to already have friends here.)

* * *

Two hours in and someone is already taking the piss over your accent. You’d be impressed at making it that far even, except you’re pretty sure they’d been up to it much, much longer and it just took you a good long while to notice. Jane tells you not to worry about it when she extracts herself from her friends for two minutes. You know you’d be welcome if you chose to join them, but Jane has neglected to extend any invitation and you’re reluctant to spend the rest of your life playing a leech.

You eat by yourself, sending occasional glances to where Jane sits with her gaggle of chums. Only one of them is familiar to you: John, her old pen pal, with whom she occasionally jokes in unpractised Korean that always escapes you because in all your linguistic dabbling that one never quite held your attention.

Shoving the last corner of a bland sandwich into your mouth, you send another cursory glance across the way and find, unexpectedly, that you’ve met someone’s own. A sharp, pale boy with narrow lips, spiked hair, and liquid amber eyes that widen as he registers you looking back.

Only a second passes before he turns red—a stain against his dark brown freckles, highlighting the spun-copper colour of his hair—and reaffixes his gaze on the pair of sunglasses he’s fidgeting in his fingers.

You could go over to him. Introduce yourself to the rest of Jane’s friends. See what all the fuss is about.

You don’t.

* * *

There’s whispering throughout your bunker, infesting every corner but yours.

In your dreams, you think you hear music.

* * *

After the first half of the week you’re plumb sick of both silence and crafts. You enjoyed the archery practise and the single go at the repelling wall, but they don’t let you do either more than once.

It’s evening. You eat another bland sandwich and scowl in the direction of the craft table.

One of Jane’s friends, a white-haired boy with tan skin and sunglasses that he never takes off, is hunched over a piece of construction paper, smudging coloured pencil across its textured surface. He shares a resemblance with the other boy, the one you caught staring—darker skin, less sharp. You know his name is Dave because people are always telling him to shut up.

“Jake,” says one of the counselors, morphing into the space behind you like some gods-damned spook. You jump. “Why don’t you go over and say hello?”

You suppose she thinks she’s being helpful. “I’m well and bloody tired of macaroni art,” you sass back, irritated and overstimulated since the _last_ counselor kicked you out of your bunk, where you’d intended on languishing until the next event that wasn’t another godawful art project. “Isn’t that stuff more for children? At least half of us are over sixteen, for pete’s sake.”

Her smile falters, but endures. You pretend it’s a ritual mask affixed to her face, forcing her to sound saccharine as she espouses the many benefits of mixing paint with shaving cream and smearing it on large pieces of canvas like a monkey with its own faeces. “Art is therapeutic,” she says, tone tight under the meaningless enthusiasm. “Go talk to someone, Jake.”

It’s a bit more of a threat than a suggestion, this time. You don’t know what more they could do to torture you, but you go anyway, dragging your heels and frowning at the ground as hard as you can. You’ll go, but you’re not going to fucking _doodle_. You nearly wrench the chair across from Dave out from where it’s tucked under the table, and deposit yourself into it gracelessly.

There’s almost no one else at the table. He looks up at you with a slack-jawed expression.

“Problem?” Dave asks.

“No,” you front.

“What’d that chair do t’ you,” he presses, his deep Texan drawl almost heavier than your own accent.

It’s got some uncomfortable implications, as far as questions go, and you don’t know how to respond to the weirdly layered interaction: an innocent sounding question masking a not-innocent callout of his socially unacceptable display of emotion. Jake wishes he was hanging out with a congress of fucking baboons over this. “I didn’t do anything to the chair. I just sat down.”

Dave snorts. “Sat down like you were tryna squash it like a bug. What’s your name? You don’t talk much, though I guess I wouldn’t either if people said as much shit about my accent as they do about yours. Uh, not that they don’t try, I guess, jus’ Dirk threatens to beat ‘em up an’ they always believe he’ll actually do it, so.”

Your interest piques. “Dirk?”

“My older brother. He’s seventeen. Over there— Oh, guess he left. He’s somewhere. You’ll know him when you see him. We all kinda look alike, you’ll know Rose ‘n’ Roxy too, they’re always with your hot cousin— I mean, Jane. Jane’s cool. Why didn’t you ever come with her to camp before?”

This is too much. You don’t even realize you’ve answered honestly until the words were out of your mouth. “I was always with my grandma, before she fell too ill to travel anymore.”

“Oh,” says Dave. You feel violently uncomfortable in the contemplative moment of silence that follows. It’s almost worse than when he won’t _stop_ talking. Then he starts back up, and you almost breathe a sigh of relief. “I never ever met any of my grandparents. That’s cool that you had one. I hope she’s okay. My brothers and sisters never really had parents, either, we came from all over. Now we all live with, like, our twice removed aunt or somethin’. No one really explained it to me. Anyway, she sends us to this shitty camp every year. This year Dirk said he wasn’t gonna go, but Roxy told him he couldn’t because if I tried to fight anyone for makin’ fun of Rose an’ me I’d probably get my teeth broke, and Jade said that’s not true, but she beats me in arm wrestlin’ every time so she’s prob’ly jus’ sayin’ that. Shit, do you know Jade? You’d like her. Jane likes her.”

You do know Jade. She’s tried to talk to you a few times. You always found ways to escape, though.

You look for a way to escape now.

“I, um, golly,” you say, floundering.

In the end, someone does it for you. “Davey!” It’s not your name, but your head whips around anyway. It’s one of Dave’s sisters, Rose or Roxy, you don’t know which. She’s wearing tiny shorts and a loose, billowy tank top, wild pale curls framing her face. She’s probably the most darkly complected of all of them, with a grinning mouth and full, um, everything. You look away when she drapes herself over Dave’s shoulders. “Stop messing around, nerd!” she chides, squeezing him affectionately in her arms. Jane sometimes hugs you like that, but not in public. “We have to get ready!”

“Get ready for what?” you ask, watching shrewdly as Dave pretends to shrug her off but doesn’t quite actually break contact.

Dave’s sister seems to notice you for the first time, her bright eyes focusing on you all at once. “Our super serious family meeting,” she says, and you don’t appreciate the joke, don’t appreciate being left out of _positively everything_ , from your grandmother’s sickness to your cousin’s social life to the publicly aired private humour of this strange palette of a family that you don’t care about at all. You don’t even mind not knowing if the girl is Rose or Roxy.

“I’m sure,” you say flatly. You don’t care. You really didn’t want to be friends with any of them anyway.

Dave opens his mouth, but his sister claps a hand over it before any sound can emerge. “Catch you later!” she says, and then drags the boy from his chair.

* * *

“Are you okay?” Jane asks, giving you a weird look. It’s five minutes to curfew, because this camp is godawfully structured and aside from the few not-horrible activities earlier in the day, there’s actually not much for a group of bored teenagers to do aside from wander around, form cliques, and… crafts. Always with the crafts. After the last activity ends around two o’clock, everyone is on their own until supper, and then again until light’s out.

No. You’re not. You aren’t okay.

You want to go home.

“I’m about fit as a fiddle, Jane,” you say instead, even if your face doesn’t sell it. “I’d wager I’m just tired.” Not bloody likely, after the fifteen minutes of archery you were indulged with earlier in the day, followed by being told you couldn’t go to swim because it looked like it might rain (it hadn’t).

Jane doesn’t look like she believes you, which you don’t blame her for. “Don’t try to pull the wool over my eyes like that, English,” she chides. “You haven’t talked to hardly anyone since you’ve gotten here!”

Whose fault is that, you don’t say. The least she could have done was introduce you.

… not that you gave her a chance, but.

“Maybe I just don’t want to talk!”

Your voice is unnecessarily sharp, and Jane looks stung. You open your mouth to apologize, and then the whistle blows announcing curfew. You turn abruptly and shuffle toward your cabin.

* * *

Sleep doesn’t come easy, that first hour. The whispers of boyish camaraderie don’t even seem to have a factor in it.

After the third hour, you realize sleep isn’t coming at _all_.

You scatter your flock of sheep and climb out of bed. What you need more than anything is a walk, sans creepily invested counselors breathing down your collar. No one is allowed to enter the forest from the camp’s boundaries without supervision.

Shimmying into a t-shirt, you don’t bother to change out of your pajama bottoms. You carry your sneakers out of the bunker and sit on the stoop to put them on, then with only a cursory look around the camp to search for rogue watchmen, you start to run.

* * *

It’s not quite up to par with racing down the shore of an unnamed beach, your grandma’s feet pounding beside you like horse hooves, the ocean a yawning, shifting abyss beside you, but it gets the job done.

* * *

You stop when you hear music. For real this time.

* * *

It’s a mishmash of different tones and notes. A tinny electric keyboard, plunking out flat chords along the pure howl of a single violin. There’s a cacophony of percussive instruments, almost swallowing up the creak of feet on some forgotten dock, stretching far over the lake. You recognize some of the dancing bodies, even through the darkness.

In fact, sitting on the edge of the dock, swishing her bare feet in the still lake water, is Jane.

The fascination with the midnight ritual dissolves in your stomach, sitting heavy like a stone. You turn around quickly and leave before anyone notices you.

* * *

You get seated next to the ginger boy—Dirk, that was his name—during a stupid puppet show. You’re too busy seething about the inability of the camp counselors to pick age-appropriate entertainment activities to enjoy anything, but he looks vaguely interested. You only catch him staring at you sidelong twice, and that’s only because you were staring at him first. As soon as the show ends, he gets up and leaves.

* * *

Everyone at Jane’s table goes abruptly silent when you set down your tray.

You scan the faces—you’ve picked up most of their names during the four days you’ve been trapped here. Aside from Dave and Dirk and Jade and John, you know Karkat, the South Asian-looking boy who spends most of his time reading near Dave and refused to do the rappelling exercise the second day. You’ve figured out which of the brown-skinned, pale-haired family’s girls was Rose and which was Roxy, and you know the name of the short, pointy sullen girl with the thick glasses and the white cane. There’s a slender girl sitting next to Rose who you recognize as the Camp Director’s intern, but you don’t remember what to call her without the overly-cheerful name tag plastered to her shirt. A couple other eyes settle on you.

You want to say something, but you feel like a kelpie stranded in the middle of a desert. Christ.

“Hi Jake!” Jade. She always tries to talk to you. You think it’s because you’re both Pacific Islander, although you don’t know exactly where Jade’s from. You’d probably like talking to her if you gave her a chance.

There’s very little room at the end of the table where you’ve set your food. Jade grabs John’s arm and hauls him closer to her, shoving everyone down the length of the bench closer together in the same motion. “Sit down,” she encourages brightly.

You stand like an asshole, frozen.

Jane lets out an aggrieved sigh. “This is my cousin, Jake,” she introduces, her voice a bit tart. “Most of you have seen him about.”

You drop heavily to the bench and try not to frown at her. “A right pleasure,” you murmur, wishing people would just stop looking at you already.

It’s not until you’re trying to drown yourself in an unsatisfying bowl of weather-inappropriate broccoli cheese soup that you notice, through the fog convincing you that everyone at the table is more awkward for your presence, you’ve sat right across from the Strider brothers, with Dave directly opposite you and Dirk next to him. When Dirk sees you look up, he looks back down at his tray.

You don’t talk the entire lunch period, but you do catch Dave’s attention on you once and he throws you a conspiratorial smile that you’re not sure you actually understand.

* * *

Despite being on the other team, Jane delicately plunks herself down next to you where you’re crouched behind the stacked bales of hay, trying to scout out a clear path to the other team’s flag. You give her a wary look, preparing to bolt, but she doesn’t look like she’s fixing to chase you.

“Blistering good day, cuz,” you say, trying to keep the edge out of your voice.

“Is it?” Jane asks, leaning forward. You dodge just out of her reach without exposing yourself on the edge of the wall of hay.

“The game seems to be a rousing success from where I’m standing, so yes—”

Jane’s face scrunches. “What was up with you at lunch today?”

You don’t flinch, but you do tense and look away. Not completely; part of your head’s still in the game, after all. “Is it so wrong for a fella to want a bit of company?”

“No,” she says, “But you just came up and didn’t say anything the whole time! That’s—”

“Is there a problem with that?” The edge is becoming harder to conceal.

“ _Yes_ , Jake! Is that what you want me to say? It’s _weird_.”

Your face burns. “Maybe I just bally want to listen!” Jane makes a frustrated gesture with her hands, growling through her teeth. You round on her, fisting your hands in your shorts. “You want to know what’s weird, Jane? Not ever introducing your cousin to any of your friends or giving a man a chance to get acclimated in an unfamiliar environment! I’m starting to think I’d be right to assume you’re _ashamed_ of me, which is a good kick in the shins on top of everything else. Why—” You hesitate, then remember that night with Jane on the dock, looking content surrounded by friends and music and dancing, and feel your eyebrows knit. “You didn’t even tell me about your little shindig after dark by the lake!”

For a moment her eyes go wide behind her spectacles, and colour rises in her plump cheeks. Jane purses her lips like she might be feeling regretful, and then looks at the grass beside her leg. “I didn’t know what you’d say about it, Jake, it’s supposed to be a _secret_ and it’s very special to us, and— look! You can’t be a darn party pooper all the time and then get upset that people aren’t inviting you to any parties!”

Everything stings and you can’t feel your hands. You start to get up anyway, abruptly very finished with this conversation. Just as you’re planning on staggering away on your weakened ankles, Jane lunges up and grabs you by the back of the shirt.

“Jane!” you yelp. “What gives?”

“Oh no you don’t, buster! I’m taking you to jail.”

* * *

You fidget within the confines of the jump rope laid on the grass in a circle. The jailkeeper stands a few paces away, his mandated two feet, watching for any of your teammates trying to free you. Dave was in the jail with you, talking your ear off, and that was nice for about five minutes until John sprinted over and dragged him back to freedom on the other side.

The time you’ve spent in the jail lengthens from eight minutes to twelve, and you end up sitting on your ass, staring at the tussling taking place all over the field. You love a good scrum, and the counselors are hardly paying attention to taming the emerging brawls. This is the most exciting thing that’s happened all week and here you are, stuck in an invisible prison. You wish your grandma were here to remind you that social mores are an illusion and rules were made to be broken. In your same position, you’ve no doubt she’d holler, “Fuck your intellectual bondage, I choose anarchy!” and crush their shitty oppressive jump rope in her strong, weathered hands.

You sit in the jail and sigh so hard it disturbs the grass.

* * *

Almost twenty minutes in, a girl you don’t know makes a beeline for the jail. You actually stand up, ready to bolt when she grabs your hand, and then—

She passes you up, and you turn, seeing the shocked expression of an enemy kid as their newest captive is wrenched from their grip no sooner than they deposited him in custody. You watch your two teammates bolt back into safe territory and stay behind, forgotten.

* * *

Thirty minutes. You’ve been sitting in this dag-blasted jump rope for a half a fucking hour, and no one has bothered to waste time on your rescue. All this time spent mostly alone and doing nothing starts to get you down, gets you remembering your spat with Jane and how much it hurt hearing that you’re unpleasant to be around. You don’t mean to be that way, damn it, you just— it’s simply that— _ugh_. You can’t even put it into words in your own head! Why would you be enough of an arse to expect anyone else to understand?

“—take a break?” you hear, distantly. You turn your face toward the sound, trying to drag your alertness back to the forefront.

Your jailkeeper is yakking with another of his teammates. You squint, because the sun is right behind them and getting in your eyes, so you don’t realize until the keeper runs off and the other body starts approaching you that your warden has been relieved, and by one Dirk Strider.

At the moment you’re the only one in the jail, since everyone else was more worthy of liberation than yourself, so when you hear Dirk speak again, you look around in surprise to find its intended target.

No one. You look at him in askance.

His expression looks the slightest bit impatient—his eyes scan the field, then drop back to you. “Come _on_ ,” he hisses through his teeth, barely moving his lips. “Just go for it.”

You blink dumbly. “Go for what?”

“Run,” he whispers. “No one will notice.”

As much as you want to argue and ask why he’s committing an act of sedition, you want to be free of your jump rope hell more than that, and so you stagger to your feet and you obey, you run like your heels are on fire and don’t look back until you get to the other side.

* * *

The next morning, you wake up, heavy with the knowledge that the music in your dreams was as real as Jane’s admission that nobody, not even her, wants you around. You bitterly pick at your watery oatmeal at breakfast, back to sitting far away from the other kids.

* * *

You’ve ridden a horse before, but it’s been a while. They always made you kind of nervous, actually, so you preferred other pass-times, or at least other animals, like camels or elephants. You kind of want to pass on the trail ride, but when you try to make excuses to the counselor she tells you that sitting out all the time is not how you make friends.

You _really_ don’t appreciate the reminder.

With a wary eye you approach the horse, unwilling to let it win. It’s just a soft-mouthed nag—cripes, you’ve wrestled adolescent lions in your travels, you don’t have to be afraid of some spirit-broken trail pony! Gripping the pommel in one hand and the reins in the other, you attempt to haul yourself bodily into the saddle.  

The gesture doesn’t execute quite as well as you planned.

The nag whinnies, dancing to the side, away from you, and your hand (sweaty) slips from the pommel, putting more of your weight on the reins than you ought to have. She snorts and jerks her head, snapping her teeth at you, and you let go of the reins in shock, then feel your foot start to slip from where you’d anchored it in the stirrup. You’re well and truly resigned to the eventual impact between your body and the manure-covered ground, followed by the inevitable rain of furious hooves over your prone, defeated form. The least the nag could do was make it quick.

You land with an oof against someone’s chest, feel the person stagger backwards as they try to steady the both of you. As soon as your feet are under you again you shout, “Jumping fucking Jehoshaphat,” and spin around.

It leaves you only a couple inches away from Dirk’s surprised face, eyebrows arching high over his funky pointed sunglasses.

“Oh.”

“Sorry,” he says, stepping back immediately. “You just, uh, looked like…” He pauses, clears his throat, and then tosses his head to your right. “You’re supposed to use the mounting block, over there.”

You follow his gaze helplessly, then look back to him. Something tells you that it’d be polite to say something, maybe thank him, but you gape like a turkey in a rainstorm and make no sound. Dirk clears his throat again and shoves his hands in his pockets. “Anyway, yeah,” he says, and then high-tails it over to where his siblings are looking leery at their own steeds for the day.

It’s several moments before the counselor prods you to get your horse and, yes, take it over to the mounting block. You get distracted on your way there watching how practised Dirk looks as he gives Roxy a leg up onto her ride, before swinging fluidly astride his own.  

* * *

By the end of the trail ride, you’ve made up your mind. You dismount from your horse, determined and chuffed full of conviction.

It immediately dissipates, like you were a balloon full of hot air and you just stepped on a tack, when you catch sight of Jane’s sour look as you start trekking toward her table again. You feel lightheaded and over-warm, staring hard at your feet as you rush past their table to go sit by yourself at the base of a tree.

* * *

As they do every evening, Jane’s friends start to get shifty an hour or so after supper, waiting for the sun to sink in the sky and curfew to hit. This time, you don’t let yourself go all yellow when you make a beeline toward the group, clustered by the edge of the camp talking in low voices. At first you don’t think they’ve noticed you, and then Jade perks up, saying, “Hey Jake!”

You bluster past any greeting, worried about losing your nerve. “I know what you guys do every night after we’re supposed to go to bed, and I just want you folks to know— Ah, as I see it—” Damn it, don’t lose it. “I want to have a part in the affair too, consarn it!”

Jane looks mortified. You almost hate yourself for doing this to her, but you convince yourself not to care.

“Do you actually play any instruments?” John asks in the tone-deaf way he does, where he doesn’t seem to mean it in a cruel way but it comes off as rather gitlike regardless.

Drawing yourself up, you say, “I studied saxophone like a madman this the summer! I got quite good at it, _didn’t I_ , Jane?”

It’s vaguely satisfying to see the deer-in-headlights expression gracing your cousin’s face when everyone turns to her for confirmation. She stutters up a storm and smooths her hand down the fronts of her pastel capris. She looks so dainty and proper, your Jane. It’s too bad she deserves this after saying what she did. “I—” She clears her throat, brushing her bangs back from her forehead. “Yes, you did, Jake.”

You puff up, vindicated. “Jane even asked me to play at a poetry jam night once, and I’m confident in saying my performance hit on all sixes.”

“Wow, really?” John comments. “That’s cool. Hey, Roxy, is there a saxophone anywhere in the music building?”

That gets your attention. “There’s a music building here?”

“The band director quit last year,” Rose says smoothly. She seems rather distantly amused at the situation. “Sister dear took the opportunity to liberate the keys from the counselors, rather than let the facilities go to waste.”

You blink, somewhat awed. “That’s… bloody brilliant, actually. That’s where the instruments come from?”

“Naturally.”

The explanation turns into a more awkward silence as everyone looks between each other. You ease off a bit, taking a small step out of their space. “If you lot need to huddle up and whisper amongst yourselves about my fate, I’ll understand,” you say, starting to lose a bit of your spark.

“Nah,” Dave says, sliding in next to Rose. They look exactly the same except for size, with Rose being quite generously figured and Dave remaining quite scrawny. Their heads reach the exact same height, though, and you catch the twitch as they pass some wealth of information between each other in the space of a quick glance, before Rose smiles and Dave twitches out the barest hint of a nod. “You can come with us tonight,” he begins, slinging his arm over his sister’s shoulders. “But you have to prove yourself first.

Straightening your spine, you ask, “What do I have to do?” You’ve seen the movies. You know how hazing works.

You don’t expect the words that come next.

“You gotta suck Dirk’s dick first.” He says it casually, without even a conspiratorial lean. Just out with it, in his twanging voice, like there’s nothing weird about that at all. Rose elbows him hard in the side.

Your eyes shoot to Dirk, whose face is plain with shock.

Dave seems to pick up on the confusion and stumbles to amend, saying, “Y’all, oh my god, it was just a joke— You don’t really hafta do that, Jake, I didn’t mean— Dirk jus’ thinks you’re cute is all. Rose, ow,” he complains as she elbows him again.

“ _Dave_ ,” Dirk wheezes, sounding vicious and aghast and embarrassed and… strangely adorable.

Huh.

“Ignore him,” Rose says smoothly, dragging your attention away from Dirk. “We meet outside the music building at eleven thirty sharp. Karkat,” she says, looking at the boy who is leaning against a tree, shutting the conversation out via his nose shoved deep into a book. He looks up, thick brows furrowing, and grunts. “You’re in Jake’s cabin, right? Will you show him where to go?”

He grunts again. “Sure. Whatever.”

She smiles. “Then it’s settled. We’ll see you later, Jake.”

It seems that you’re being dismissed now, but you can’t help your constant glances back at Dirk as you retreat to revel in your success.

* * *

You don’t think you’ve been this excited in… basically ever.

Jade helps you pore through the racks of instruments and pluck out a dusty sax. You spend several minutes fiddling with it to get it in working order, and almost are fool enough to let a big loud honk to see how it plays, right there in the middle of camp. Everyone else gathers their own instruments—Rose her violin, John that tinny electric keyboard, Jade and Dave and Karkat a handful of drums and rhythm-makers. Roxy grabs a ukelele and Dirk… doesn’t grab anything, just quickly turns away when you look at him.

You follow them through the trees, quiet on your feet as they show you a practised path out the back of the old music building, into the forest toward the lake. It’s a much more direct path than yours was, and more hidden.

The edge of the lake blooms in your vision, still and misty in the clear moonlight. Halfway down to that long, obscured dock in the tiny cove, someone grabs your hand.

You jump a bit, turning to see your cousin, steel-faced and red up to her ears, marching sternly beside you like she’s leading you into a war.

She won’t apologize.

You squeeze her palm in your fingers and tug her closer, swinging your arms as you quicken your gait.

* * *

The sounds explode out of you like magic. For the first time on this godforsaken trip you feel like you’re in your element, _an_ element, a chemical reaction, maybe. Maybe you can make this work.

* * *

“Holy shit,” Dave says. He’s out of breath. For such a scrawny nerd he’s surprisingly good at dancing, which you belatedly realize is why you didn’t recognize him among the other undulating bodies that night you stumbled upon them. It’d taken him a moment to mesh his movements with the first slow, experimental notes from the neglected instrument in your hands, but as everyone fell into beat together, so did the dancers.

You’d almost stopped playing to laugh when Dave pulled Janey up and into his arms and did a poor imitation of leading her at a swing dance. Jane, who had taken lessons, got good and tired of his attempts, whirled him around, and took control. At that part you actually _did_ take the mouthpiece away from your lips to chuckle, watching your short, plush cousin spin the tall and lanky boy in her arms like an expert.

Dave slumps onto a fallen tree trunk next to Karkat, snuggles up to him. “That was fuckin’ cosmic,” he breathes, nose burying in Karkat’s neck.

You look away, smile absent on your mouth. You don’t say much, just enjoy the chatter as the musicians and dancers alike take a break.

“What other songs do you know?” Jade asks, removing herself from her daring perch atop part of the dock railing, where she’d been _dancing_ of all things, while expertly beating on a handheld drum. Your jam had been a giddy mix of freestyling, collaborating on pieces of popular music, common band tunes, and just plum _making shit up_. Someone started with a riff, and someone else would join in, layers upon layers, bodies starting to churn as the beat grafted itself to their bones.

You grin at her. “I’m a bit winded, chum,” you say, pulling the strap of the saxophone over your head and setting it down gently. “Give me a minute or five, eh?”

She winks back. “Roger that. Roxy!”

The two girls, not running on windpower, settle down into a flurry of whispers about what to play next. That’s when Dirk morphs into your peripheral.

He looks unsure, like he’s trying to appear overly casual, like it’s an accident he ended up anywhere near you. You smile directly at him as if you hadn’t been the one who was too nervous to say a single coherent word to him, all this time. “Hullo, Dirk.”

He starts at the sound of your voice, then gets ahold of himself, nodding. “Hey.”

“Enjoying the night?” you as glibly, willing yourself not to freeze up.

“It’s nice,” he says, easing himself into your space but leaving a good foot between your shoulders. “Are you…” he hesitates. “Having fun?”

“Yes, quite,” you say, and genuinely mean it. “I’m having a rousing good time. You folks sure do know how to throw a mean fete; it’s almost a shame I didn’t think to introduce myself sooner. It’s bloody brilliant of you to let me attend. I feel like I’m at some old, secret speakeasy, listening to jazz and dirty dancing and drinking bathtub moonshine. It’s just like the movies, really.”

He goes a bit red around the edges, looks down. He’s not wearing his weird sunglasses, so you see the way his long eyelashes nearly brush his cheek with the gesture. Dark freckles spatter his face like smooth stones at the bottom of a clear, miles deep river. “I’m glad.” You beam at him, feeling quite companionable, and are utterly surprised when he bursts out with a nervous exclamation, “I’m so fuckin’ sorry about earlier, by the way, I— Dave’s just a shit, you know, he didn’t actually mean anything by what he said—”

“I wasn’t offended,” you offer innocently, looking up at him over the rim of your glasses.

Dirk pauses. “You weren’t?” he hazards, voice quiet, posture still flighty like he could escape at any moment and it’d be like he was never here.

You decide firmly that you don’t want that. “I mean, it’s not every day that a handsome gent thinks he’d fancy making your acquaintance with his most intimate anatomy, right? I’m not insulted at all.”

You see the whites of his sclera when his eyes widen, lips parting. No sound comes out. “Oh,” Dirk finally says.

“In fact,” you add, and your throat starts to close up but you don’t let it stop you, don’t let the feeling of your face going hot and red throw you off your rhythm. You are a cosmic gosh-darned element and it is time to _react_. “I wouldn’t have objected to the terms, had anyone actually insisted.”

“That’s not—”

“I wouldn’t object,” you rush forward, forcing yourself to meet his eyes, “were such a handsome gent to retroactively revisit those terms.”

* * *

You push him against a tree, nearly wild with the taste of his mouth, his chapped lips catching against your own. You can still hear the music, far off, the splash of someone breaking the stillness of the lake. Dirk breaks _your_ inner stillness, arching up against you, gasping into your mouth, fisting his hands in your shirt. You could kiss him forever. It was hard waiting long enough to get away from the group before you could sample him, your body suddenly screaming for the touch of this strange, sharp fellow with ginger hair and frightened amber eyes.

It’s your first kiss with a boy.

It’s nothing you ever knew you needed, so intensely, feeling answering hardness when you rock your hips against his own. Dirk cries out, cants his hips back, digs his fingers into your shoulders. Yes, you could kiss him forever, but you’re not going to. You came here for something else.

Breaking away from his mouth, you suck sloppily against his neck, being sure not to leave a mark on his pale, milk-in-tea skin where the camp counselors would certainly spy it. He’s light under your brown hands, speckled with those bold, blotchy freckles. You tongue at a smattering on his collarbone, just above the hem of his tank top, getting your fingers in the tight curls of his styled hair.

“Fuck, Jake,” he breathes, running his fingers in a giddy line back and forth over a small sliver of skin at the small of your back, peeking between your shirt and the waistband of your shorts. It makes you twitch, arching into him again. Reminding you of what waits between his legs.

You shove his tank top up over his pecs and kiss sloppily down his exposed chest as you sink, clumsy and unsure, to your knees.

Dirk’s face is mostly in shadow but you can still see the whites of his wide, wondering, fearful eyes. A boy this pretty should never be so scared, you think. “Are you sure? Are you—”

“Quite sure,” you say firmly, and then press your face against his jeans, rubbing your mouth against the line of his cock through the denim. It gives you time to think about how to go about this, how to— oh, blustering hell, like you’ve never fished a dick out of a fly before. Ridiculous. You introduce your hand to the mix, testing the weight of him, exploring how it pushes wantonly against the front of his jeans. Dirk forces out a squeaking whine, and you look up at him, undoing his fastenings. “You sound anxious, sport,” you say, sure that there’s a wicked glint in your green eyes. “Something the matter?”

He gasps, hands going to your shoulders, squeezing. “Nothing, I— Nothing.”

You chuckle, rubbing him through his underwear. “If I wasn’t sure I knew better, I’d think this was your first time in this position.”

Silence. Dirk bites his lip. Your mouth parts, hand stilling. “You’ve never—?”

“Not like this,” Dirk admits, lifting a hand to cover his eyes, hiding himself. Hiding you. “I never— No one ever—”

Very gently, you reach up, grabbing his elbow and pulling his palm away from his face. “Then I’ll make sure not to heck this up then, won’t I?” You offer him a dazzling smile. “Just keep your eyes on me, alright?”

Dirk nods, wordless, as you push his undershorts and jeans down his hips in one singular motion, and wrangle out his long, smooth cock.

The first thing you notice is that he doesn’t have a foreskin. You trace his circumcision scar curiously, comparing the texture to that of your own. It’s— longer, but takes up less space in your hand, which you think is good, maybe, won’t stretch your lips as much, oh hell. No, no chickening out now, English. You’re doing this.

You run your hand down the length of it until it’s at the base, brushing a thatch of wiry hair, and make sure to meet his terrified gaze when you place the first, trembling kiss against the head. The skin is torturously soft and just a bit damp under your lips, and you follow it up with a wetter, more enthusiastic ministration, sucking lightly at the sensitive glans. Dirk’s hips jerk once, and he gasps in surprise.

“I’m sorry,” he breathes out.

“Don’t be, pet,” you say, and slide him all the way down to the back of your throat, just like that.

It’s quite an ambitious venture, and you aren’t quite up to the task. You cough and drool around him, jerking back. Dirk’s hand hovers in the air like he doesn’t know if he should help you, or even how he would. “Are you okay?”

You grin up at him, tears in your eyes. “Just peachy!” You lower your head again.

* * *

It doesn’t take long to get the hang of it, but you’re admittedly more shocked than you expected to be by Dirk’s reaction to the whole thing. Once you got him past a few more outbursts of insecurity, the real fireworks started happening. Instead of clasping his fingers over his eyes he has them in a tight band across his mouth, muffling his desperate sounds as you suck at him fervidly, not wanting those sounds to stop, as much as you’re afraid of being discovered. This way only you can hear them, vibrating against his own flesh, see the way his face scrunches in the shadows of the forest.

You groan around his cock, trying once again to fit as much of it down your throat as possible. You can’t go all the way down, no matter how hard you try, but this time you don’t choke, and that’s a damn good improvement. In lieu of being able to take his entire length you suck your lips tight around him, hollowing your cheeks as you slowly draw back.

Dirk’s knees wobble, and you pop off his cock with a wet sound, raising your hands to grip his hips and steady him. “Easy there, boy, don’t swoon just yet,” you tease, lapping at him where precum beads salty and silky on your tongue. Dirk’s free hand grapples around trying to find support, ends up hooking over a low branch near his head, clutching it desperately. “That’s a boy,” you croon, “hold on, just like that.”

Fondness fills you, earthy and heady, as you keep your eyes on him, opening your mouth to let his cock slide inch-by-tempting-inch back into the heat of your mouth. Dirk’s gaze is locked on yours as he chokes out another whimper.

You smirk around the shape of his dick and go to work.

It takes you a while to figure out how to incorporate your hand into the mix, and when you finally get it down Dirk is positively _screaming_ , his thighs shaking wildly where he barely stands, more holds himself upright by the grace of determination alone. His sweaty fingers slip off his mouth and fist in your hair, clutching you close when you slide down, sucking and humming around him like the stuff you dreamed of happening to yourself, never imagining you’d be putting it to test on another gent.

“Jake,” he rasps out, voice a sob. “I’m gonna— I’m about to—”

You laugh breathlessly, and bob your head faster, jerking your hand in tandem with your swollen, sliding mouth. There’s your answer, Dirk.

He doesn’t waste another breath on wondering: in the next second fluid, hot and salty, shoots into the back of your waiting throat. You don’t know what to do with it immediately, just licking at him and sucking as he spasms and bucks, another jet filling your mouth. All at once Dirk goes pliant, and you still haven’t figured out the exact etiquette on spitting versus swallowing when his hand slips from the stabilizing branch.

Dirk goes down, back skidding against the tree, dragging his shirt up. You scrabble to catch him and end up choking on your forgotten mouthful of his spunk.

* * *

The two of you morph back into the group, where things have mostly settled down. There’s a long trail of bodies draped across the length of the dock, your peers having stretched themselves out to gaze at the stars.

It feels like magic, even if your mouth still tastes a little weird.

“That was incredible,” you note, taking his hand. Dirk tenses, but doesn’t pull away. You’re glad everyone else is at the dock. You kind of appreciate the distance right now, instead guiding him over to a smooth-ish expanse where thin grass lines the ground, just before a shallow incline leading to the lake’s edge. You sit yourself down and look up at him expectantly.

“I’m glad you thought it was okay,” he hedges, settling himself next to you.

You snort at his hesitation, insistently squeezing his fingers. You like this boy, you decide, even if it’s a bit late to have that epiphany. “I was honoured to be your first, um.” Fellatio administer...er…? Jake, no. You clear your throat.

“I didn’t expect you to,” Dirk murmurs, voice a little distant. “I mean, we could have done it the other way, if you’d wanted.”

“I was more than fine with the way the cards fell,” you assure him. How could he ever think you’d eschew that beautiful memory of him shaking wildly apart above you, just from the proportionately miniscule attention of your mouth on his southerly parts? How could you even explain the feeling of connection—so often lacking—you experienced in that moment of power, rich and raw? You chuckle, shaking your head. “Though I won’t exactly object to trying it the other way around, either.”

Dirk blinks at you with his long lashes, wondering. “You’d want to? Again?”

You smile. “I have to do something to fill up the next five days we’re stuck here, right? It’s thrilling, really. You know all those jokes in teen lore about losing one’s virginity at band camp.”    

“This isn’t even band camp,” Dirk says flatly. “They closed the entire music department.”

“Hush,” you say, patting his thigh. You lean back, stretching out on the grass. It’s slightly damp under your back, but you don’t really care. “It won’t hurt us to pretend.”

Dirk goes silent, and then breathes in, preparatory. “That was your first time?”

You nod, smiling distantly. “Quite. Not exactly what I expected, I admit, but as far as the week’s gone, it’s certainly an improvement!”

Humming in contemplation, Dirk lowers himself down next to you in measured, careful increments, like he’s ready for you to change your mind at any moment and shove him away. Instead you turn on your side, tucking against his shoulder. “You’ll hang out with us more often?” he asks, sounding concerned, breath rushing warmly over your forehead.

“I’d wager I might,” you say, not promising anything. “I’ll find time for you, at the very least.”

* * *

Dirk wakes you up an hour later, jostling you from a sleep you didn’t realized you’d succumbed to. He kisses you under the veil of darkness when he and his brother drop you and Karkat off at your cabin. You don’t want to let him go but you reluctantly do, mouths parting and bodies slipping back into their own bubbles. You like your space, but you feel oddly lonely just being one single entity once more.

He climbs down the stairs backwards, reluctant to look away from you; the feeling is mutual. His hair looks like strawberry-kissed gold in the low moonlight.

“I don’t have a good metaphor for this,” you say, watching him strain to hear you.

“I’ll think of one,” he promises, taking several more steps backwards into the camp, toward his own bunk.

“I’ll hold you to that,” you respond, just a bit louder, since he’s coming to be so awfully far away.

“Tomorrow then,” he says.

You grin, running your hand backward through your sweaty hair. You think tomorrow night you'll try to get him to dance, and maybe take him up on his offer of switching things up. “Tomorrow. For sure.”

Dirk fades into the night, finally turning around to catch up with his brother, and you feel the last vestiges of the reaction fade, leaving your fingertips tingling like you just touched an outlet, a loose wire.

So very reluctant, you tuck yourself into bed. Tonight you don't dream of exclusionary whispers or loneliness, but surging, chemical connection. Music under the oil-slick, freckled sky. Dirk's promised metaphor. You fall asleep thinking of this fleeting brush with real, actual friendship, and dream of being cosmic.


End file.
